mean Stacey, Bob, Ralph and me. Ted Spencer is the supervisor responsible for the heat-treat furnaces. He's an older guy with hair that looks like steel wool and a body like a steel file. We've got him and Mario DeMonte, supervisor of the machining center with the NCX-10. Mario is as old as Ted, but plumper.
Stacey and Ralph both have red eyes. Before we sat down, they told me about the work that went into this morning's meet- ing.
Getting the list of overdue orders was easy. The computer listed them and sorted them according to lateness. Nothing to it, didn't even take a minute. But then they had to go over the bills of material for each of the orders and find out which parts are done by the bottlenecks. And they had to establish whether there was inventory to make those parts. That took most of the night.
We all have our own photocopies of a hand-written list Ralph has had prepared. Listed in the print-out is a grand total of sixty seven records, our total backlog of overdue orders. They have been sorted from most-days- past-due to least-days. The worst one, at the top of the list, is an order that is fifty eight days beyond the delivery date promised by marketing. The best are one day late; there are three of those orders.
'We did some checking,' says Ralph. 'And about ninety per- cent of the current overdues have parts that flow through one or both of the bottleneck operations. Of those, about eighty five per- cent are held up at assembly because we're waiting for those parts to arrive before we can build and ship.'
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'So it's obvious those parts get first priority,' I explain to the two supervisors.
Then Ralph says, 'We went ahead and made a list for both heat-treat and the NCX-10 as to which parts they each have to process and in what order-again, the same sequence of latest order to least late. In a day or two we can generate the list by computer and stop burning the midnight oil.'
'Fantastic, Ralph. I think both you and Stacey have done a super job,' I tell him. Then I turn to Ted and Mario. 'Now, all you gentlemen have to do is have your foremen start at the top of the list and work their way down.'
'That sounds easy enough,' says Ted. 'I think we can han- dle that.'
'You know, we may have to go track some of these down,' says Mario.
'So you'll have to do some digging through the inventory,' says Stacey. 'What's the problem?'
Mario frowns and says, 'No problem. You just want us to do what's on this list, right?'
'Yep, it's that simple,' I say. 'I don't want to see either of you working on something not on that list. If the expediters give you any problem, tell them to come see me. And be sure you stick to the sequence we've given you.'
Ted and Mario both nod.
I turn to Stacey and say, 'You do understand how important it is for the expediters not to interfere with this priority list, don't you?'
Stacey says, 'Okay, but you have to promise me you won't change it because of pressure from marketing.'
'My word of honor,' I tell her. Then I say to Ted and Mario, 'In all seriousness, I hope you two guys know that heat-treat and the NCX-10 are the most important processes in the whole plant. How well you manage those two could very well determine whether this plant has a future.'
'We'll do our best,' says Ted.
'I can assure you that they will,' says Bob Donovan.
Right after that meeting, I go down the hall to the personnel relations for a meeting with Mike O'Donnell, the union local president. When I walk in, my personnel manager, Scott Dolin, is
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gripping the armrests of his chair with white knuckles, while O'Donnell is talking at the top of his voice.
'What's the problem here?' I ask.
'You know very well what the problem is: your new lunch rules in heat-treat and n/c machining,' says O'Donnell. 'They're in violation of the contract. I refer you to Section Seven, Para- graph Four...'
I say, 'Okay, wait a minute, Mike. It's time we gave the union an update on the situation of the plant.'
For the rest of the morning I describe for him the situation the plant is in. Then I tell him some of what we've discovered and explain why the changes are necessary.
Wrapping up, I say, 'You understand, don't you, that it's probably only going to affect about twenty people at the most?'
He shakes his head.
'Look, I appreciate you trying to explain all this,' he says. 'But we got a contract. Now if we look the other way on one thing, what's to say you won't start changing whatever else you don't like?'
I say, 'Mike, in all honesty, I can't tell you that down the road aways, we won't need to make other changes. But we're ultimately talking about jobs. I'm not asking for cuts in wages or concessions on benefits. But I am asking for flexibility. We have to have the leeway necessary to make changes that will allow the plant to make money. Or, very simply, there may not be a plant in a few months.'
'Sounds like scare tactics to me,' he says finally.
'Mike, all I can say is, if you want to wait a couple of months to see if I'm just trying to scare everyone, it'll be too late.'
O'Donnell is quiet for a moment.
Finally, he says, 'I'll have to think about it, talk it over and all that. We'll get back to you.'
By early afternoon, I can't stand it anymore. I'm anxious to find out how the new priority system is working. I try calling Bob Donovan, but he's out in the plant. So I decide to go have a look for myself.
The first place I check is the NCX-10. But when I get to the machine, there's nobody to ask. Being an automated machine, it runs a lot of the time with nobody tending it. The problem is that when I walk up, the damn thing is just sitting there. It isn't run- ning and nobody is doing a set-up. I get mad.
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I go find Mario.
'Why the hell isn't that machine working?' I ask him.
He checks with the foreman. Finally he walks back to me.
'We don't have the materials,' he says.
'What do you mean,
'But you told us to work according to what's on the list,' says Mario.
'You mean you finished all the late parts?'
'No, they did the first two batches of parts,' says Mario. 'When they got to the third part on the list, they looked all around and couldn't find the materials for it in the queue. So we're shut down until they turn up.'
I'm ready to strangle him.
'That's what you wanted us to do, right?' says Mario. 'You wanted us to do only what was on the list and in the same order as listed, didn't you? Isn't that what you said?'
